This invention relates to electric toasting machines of the kind designed and arranged for the toasting particularly of bakery products such as slices of bread, sandwiches, bread buns, teacakes, crumpets and baps, but also for toasting/grilling of other food products.
Toasting machines for this purpose commonly have radiant heating elements which are arranged to be set a short distance from one or both sides of the food product to be toasted, and commonly the degree or colour of toasting is determined in dependence on the length of time the heating element or elements is or are energised. A "toast colour selection" setting control is provided for selecting a time period for a toasting cycle. For example a selected time period is usually selectable within the range 5 seconds to 240 seconds.
A problem arises with conventional arrangements in that the heating elements operate more efficiently and provide greater toasting if the heating elements have recently been used so that the toasting machine is still hot from a previous usage, by comparison with the time taken for satisfactory toasting when the machine has not been used for some considerable period of time so that the machine has little or no retained heat from previous usage. It is known from, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,128,521, 4,510,376, 4,503,758 and 4,454,803 to use a microprocessor in a toasting machine to select a current heating cycle in dependence both on the toast colour selection setting and prior use of the toasting machine since connection to a power source. For example in these specifications the microcprocessor has a memory in which are included a plurality of tables of toasting time cycles and the microprocessor selects a particular table in dependence on (a) the toast colour selected, (b) the length of the last toast cycle, (c) the time since the last toast cycle, and (d) the number of previous cycles in a set period prior to initiation of a current cycle. Such systems are relatively complicated and expensive. They do not necessarily allow for extension of the time period set after first connection of a toaster to a power source.